Teacher suggested giving boy more food, not taking it away

Thursday

Feb 14, 2013 at 3:15 AMFeb 15, 2013 at 5:03 PM

By Liz Markhlevskayalmark@fosters.com

DOVER — New Durham School staff members testified Wednesday that despite Christina Thomas being charged with starving a young boy under her care, she seemed to show concern for the well-being of the alleged victim.

Despite this, the teacher and the speech/language assistant who testified for the prosecution Wednesday said they felt uncomfortable withholding food from the boy at the request of Thomas, and were concerned about the boy's energy levels.

Thomas, 34, of 214 Birch Hill Road in New Durham, is accused of first-degree assault for allegedly starving a boy in her care between 2006 and 2010. The boy is now 9 years old, and is in an open adoptive relationship with his biological mother.

Susan Wood, the school nurse for New Durham School, which the boy attended, said the boy weighed 23 pounds when he started preschool in September 2008. She said while the boy attended the school for about a year and a half, Thomas, who was viewed as his caretaker, showed frustration that he wasn't gaining weight despite her efforts.

At the same time, staff members were told by Thomas to take away some of his food if he became too emotional or was experiencing rumination — a condition in which a person vomits into his or her mouth and then swallows.

In October 2009, Wood said she received a report from Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hospital, stating the rumination was not caused by an illness, and that “he should be fed whenever he is hungry,” because “he still has growing to do.”

Wood said that the boy's Individualized Education Program (IEP), in which Thomas told staff to take away some of his carrot sticks as a form of punishment, was contrary to the note from the hospital.

Nancy Haseltine, kindergarten teacher at New Durham School, said she saw the boy eating cereal, carrot sticks, and peanut butter sandwiches at school, but she felt uncomfortable with the notion of taking the boy's food away, especially with the boy's small size.

“We've never done that in the past,” said Haseltine about the tactic requested by Thomas. “There was talk going on throughout the school about (the boy) and how small he was.”

She said that in her interaction with Thomas, the topic of the boy's health would come up quite often, and Thomas' tone in those discussions showed nothing but concern.

At times, the young boy came to school with no lunch in hand, and Haseltine said she was told he ate his lunch on the bus on his way to school. Haseltine said she tried to address the issue with Thomas and her mother Peggy Starr, who has also been charged in the case. Haseltine suggested giving the boy additional food during lunchtime so he wouldn't go hungry. She said Thomas and Starr told her not to feed the boy — that way he would learn not to eat his lunch on the way to school.

Thomas and Starr also reported to Haseltine that the boy ate breakfast each morning, as well as dinner, but Haseltine had told them that with no lunch, the child had very low energy levels in the afternoon.

In the fall of 2009, despite the objections by Thomas and Starr, the young boy was fed by school officials during lunch, even if he reportedly ate his own lunch on the bus.

Shortly after, Haseltine was informed by the family the boy was being taken out of school, and would be home-schooled.

“We were heartbroken,” said Haseltine, who said school officials were concerned home-schooling would not be enough to provide the boy an adequate education.

According to Deputy County Attorney Alysia Cassotis, the prosecution has no evidence the boy was being home-schooled after leaving New Durham School in December 2009.

Susan Delaney, a speech/language assistant at New Durham School, began working with the young boy in September 2009. She described the boy as being “extremely small for his age,” and said his language skills were delayed to the point where he was unintelligible, only speaking two- to three-word sentences when she initially met him.

Despite his delay in speech, Delaney said the boy was outgoing, and tended to seek affection from staff members at the school.

“He came across as a very happy kid,” said Delaney.

Still, she said the boy seemed to always talk about wanting food. Delaney said she was under the impression that the boy had an “undiagnosed bizarre eating disorder” and she was told not to give the boy snacks.

Wood said because of the boy's small stature, she monitored the boy's weight about once a week, since he began attending preschool at New Durham School. In September 2008, he weighed 23 pounds, and his weight was fluctuating throughout the school year. By the time he left the school in December 2009, he weighed 26 pounds.

After the boy was placed in Division of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) custody in 2010, Wood said she saw the boy when he visited the school, and she weighed him again. At that time, his weight was approximately 36 pounds.

Delaney and Haseltine said they, too, saw the boy during that visit, and they testified that he looked much healthier.

“He'd gained a lot of weight, he looked like a totally different child,” Delaney testified.

Looking back, Delaney said she wished the community as a whole could have done more for the child.

Dr. James Halla, a clinical psychologist, testified Wednesday he was asked to evaluate Thomas and the boy's mother after physicians' determination that the boy underwent “severe neglect and abuse.”

The boy's mother, whose identity is not being revealed by Foster's, has a developmental disability. She and her son had been living at Thomas' home for several years. Last week the boy's mother testified that she was also abused by Thomas, and that she participated in abusing the young boy under the direction of Thomas and Starr. She also testified that her son was at times put in a dog kennel or tied to his bunk bed by a dog leash, as punishment for getting too emotional or crying about being hungry.

At Strafford County Superior Court on Wednesday, Halla testified that during the forensic evaluation, the boy's mother was strikingly nonemotional when discussing the alleged abuse of her young son.

“She was talking as if she was talking about the weather to me,” said Halla, who had concluded the mother had limited or nonexistent attachment to her son. “She spoke very matter-of-factly.”

Halla said that based on his psychological evaluations, he concluded the boy's mother was immature, and tended to choose her own self interests over those of others.

He said he also concluded the boy's biological mother has “fundamentally failed this child over and over ... and over again.”

In administering psychological tests on Thomas, Halla said Thomas failed to validly complete three of the tests, in that the way she answered the questions, it was determined she was “making herself look good,” and the tests could not be verified, because the results weren't valid.

Halla said in his 20 years conducting evaluations for DCYF, he has not had anyone's test results come in as “not valid” on three tests.

During the forensic interview, Halla said, there were times when Thomas was “inappropriately familiar with me” acting as though they had been friends for a long time. He said she also seemed unwilling to accept responsibility for what happened to the boy, or to what her own biological five children had been exposed to while living with her.

Halla said Thomas denied abusing the child or depriving him of food. But he also said her failure to truthfully complete three psychological tests can suggest that she wasn't been honest during other parts of the evaluations, such as the interview.

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